Future of Cyber Cafes in India
During the Bangalore Cyber Security
Summit 2009, held on October 8th and 9th, one of the issues which came for
discussion is the impact of the proposed amendments to ITA 2008 on various
Intermediaries.
While most of the speakers spoke about
the increasing security threats and therefore a strict regulation on Cyber
Cafes, there was a discussion in one of the sessions about how to ensure
that Cyber Cafes donot lose business as a result of either the stricter
regulations or because the internet availability has now gone mobile with
GPRS enabled mobile phones as well as the ubiquitous laptops.
We can recall an
article which had been published a few months back in a blog where
some interesting statistics were provided. A survey by the Internet and
Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB was quoted to indicate that
that the Cyber Cafe users as a percentage of overall Internet users had
declined from 52% in 2003 to 39% in 2006. A more recent survey by A C
Nielsen was also quoted to say that the usage has declined further to 34 %
.
Though the per hour browsing rate has
also declined, it appears that the actual gross revenue downfall has not
been as steep as the fall in the numbers indicating that revenue is also
being realized through value added services including printing, video and
photo uploading , online gaming etc.
The survey therefore holds out a
promise that if the business of a Cyber Cafe can be properly structured,
the recessionary effect can be arrested to some extent.
Mr Ashish Saboo, President,
Association of Public ICT Tools had expressed the opinion that part of the
decline was due to the regulatory pressures.
In the light of the above
observations, it may appear that with the ITA 2008, there should be greater
regulatory pressures. But my own observation in Karnataka is that
very few (excepting the corporate Cyber Cafes) are actually complying with
the regulation and hence the decline in the previous years is not due to
regulatory pressures but because of the general decline in use of public
access computing. One reason is that there were a few instances in
Karnataka where key Loggers had been installed in the Cyber Cafes leading
to loss of Bank passwords and Credit Card information of some of the
customers who became victims of cyber crimes. This projected accessing
through Internet as "Insecure" and hence people have stopped using Cyber
Cafes for financial transactions.
One of the reasons why Cyber Cafes in
Maharashtra have found regulations difficult to handle was that the
regulations were too stringent. Same was the case with Gujarat. Complete
Compliance was almost impossible in some cases or anyway not feasible
without high costs.
Now that the Cyber Cafe regulations
are likely to be revisited when the ITA 2008 is notified, there would be at
least uniformity in the regulations in different states. This may remove
certain impractical regulations but nevertheless, at a time that Terrorism
is a threat and Cyber Cafes are definitely the access points used by
terrorists, it is not possible for the regulations to be any lighter than
what it is now.
This could mean that ID management
would be more strictly enforced along with data retention under Sec 67 C or
otherwise. The penalties for non compliance would be much stricter. It is
therefore necessary for Cyber Cafes to consider planning for proper
compliance to reduce the risk related costs.
In my opinion, maintaining compliance
entirely on a manual basis is not going to happen and if any Cyber Cafe
owner tries to cut costs and manage compliance manually, he is bound to end
up in problems.
In this context the technology
solutions discussed during the Summit appeared to hold promise for
Compliance without the need for manual intervention. It was demonstrated
that technology need not be expensive and also that the use of technology
itself can open up new avenues of revenue so that instead of the revenue
declining, we may actually see revenue of Cyber Cafes increasing.
Another aspect of the technology
discussed was that it could enable the unorganized sector of Cyber Cafe
owners majority of whom own one or two units can come on a common service
platform and together harness the benefits which today are available only
for large corporate cyber cafes.
Naavi.org has been suggesting a plan
to create
"E
Bridge Centers" out of the Cyber Cafes and proivde them with new
avenues of revenue, since the year 2002. It appears that this vision may
finally become a reality in Karnataka. The trial run of the technology is
going to happen in Karnataka over the next few months and it is expected
that the Cyber Cafe owners in Karnataka can look forward to being compliant
of Cyber laws, friendly with the Police and at the same time increase their
revenue.
The trial run of the technology is
going to happen in Karnataka over the next few months and it is expected
that the Cyber Cafe owners in Karnataka can look forward to being compliant
of Cyber laws, friendly with the Police and at the same time increase their
revenue.
Naavi.org which has been advocating
Building of a "Responsible Cyber Space" would welcome the introduction of
such technologies which create a Cyber Law Compliant Cyber Cafe network
across the State of Karnataka. If other States are interested, similar
technologies can also perhaps be deployed there.
There could be initial mistrust and
apprehension when the new technology is rolled out but hopefully the
apprehensions would be removed once the Cyber Cafe owners are able to
understand the way the technology would work.
Naavi
October 10, 2009
[Comments
Welcome]
Comments are Welcome at naavi@vsnl.com
